City not safe for anyone

Across the city Thursday, the haunting fear of flooding was replaced by a raw fear for life and public safety.

Navigating the St. Thomas area of the Lower Garden District in an SUV, Times-Picayune reporter Gordon Russell, accompanied by a photographer from The New York Times, described a landscape of lawlessness where he feared for his life and felt his safety was threatened at nearly every turn.

"There was no crowd control, " Russell said. "People were swarming. It was a near riot situation. The authorities have got to get some military down here to get control of the situation."

Russell witnessed a shootout between police and citizens near the Convention Center that left one man dead in a pool of blood. Police, perhaps caught off guard by their sudden arrival on the scene, slammed Russell and the photographer against a wall and threw their gear on the ground as they exited their SUV to record the event.

The journalists retreated to Russell's home Uptown where they hid in fear. They planned to flee the city later today.

Almost everywhere Russell went Uptown, one of the few relatively dry areas in Orleans Parish, he said he felt the threat of violence.

"There is a totally different feeling here than there was yesterday (Wednesday), " said Russell, who has reported on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina since the storm devastated the city on Monday. "I'm scared. I'm not afraid to admit it. I'm getting out of here."